SOME MORE JULY 4TH THOUGHTS

By Ruth A. Sheets

There is so much going on politically right now I am having some difficulty keeping track of it.  I suspect this may be a challenge for many others too.  It would be pretty easy to sit back and say, “well, there are just too many people working to undermine our democracy, how can I, one little person do anything to stop them?”  We all can do a lot but we need to see how we and our democracy are being undermined so we can act where we can.  

A reading from the Christian Scripture Book of Romans this past week got me thinking about sin.  St. Paul was worrying about sin and why he keeps doing sin.  I am not sure why he kept doing it, but I have come to the conclusion that a working definition for sin could be, “doing harm to another person.”  This harm may be physical like killing, assaulting, raping, or in another way using violence or force to do harm.  It can also be emotional harm where through words and actions one belittles, deliberately insults, gaslights, harasses, or lies to or about anyone for the purpose of doing emotional harm.  Then, there’s stealing, cheating, or committing vandalism, again with the intent to harm.  It does not matter what the other person’s response is if, for example, they say, “it’s OK and I forgive you.”  The sin is committed when we step over the line and intend to harm someone else.

This year when Independence Day came around, it occurred to me that people regularly commit sin against our society.  Many people over the years, mostly men) probably because they have had the most power to do harm), have done a lot to try to shape this nation so it will favor themselves and their group, usually white men.  Their sins have done tremendous harm to those who happened to be in the way of advancement meant to benefit those, usually also rich men.  

We are currently in one of those times when we are faced with a critical mass of folks willing to do as much harm as they can get away with, and right now, they are getting away with a lot, just as in the past.  The lying that has brought us into wars is probably the most harmful action, but name-calling and accusations, cheating and stealing by banks and racist financial institutions have done their part too.  Consider the War in Iraq beginning in 2003 started by lies, the McCarthy Communism insanity of the 1950s accusing people of being communists as though it were a crime, and the Great Recession of 2008+, banks cheating and misinforming mortgage holders.  The people causing the harm knew they were doing it, but thought they would get away with it, and for the most part, they did.

What do those folks have in common, a desire for power, the ability to intimidate people, and the money they accumulated.  They showed a total disregard for the people they hurt and the damage they caused our society, and all of it deliberate.   

When the attack on the society comes from people or institutions that are well-known, it is easy for others to latch onto the perpetrators, hoping some of the “glory” will spill onto them.  Maybe as a bonus, they can take their revenge on those who have less than they do  expecting they will have the nominal blessing of the ones in charge.  Those midlevel influencers don’t realize they, themselves are pawns of those at the top and are only useful as long as they do what they are told, hurt the right people, and stay out of the way when not needed.

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump and a select group of men (and a couple of women) planned an insurrection.  All knew Trump had lost a fair election, but just couldn’t stand to see Trump and his cause (whatever it was) defeated and out of power.  They made sure Fox pundits and others were on board first, then began spreading the word to those midlevel influencers like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys whom they were sure they could count on.  Some members of Congress were all in too and even gave “encouraging” speeches in support that morning.  People who thought they came to hear speeches and Trump himself, got purposefully or inadvertently caught up in the theatrics directed by Trump and friends.  By the time they reached the capitol, they knew what they were doing was wrong, but they no longer cared, just as Trump and the others hoped would happen.  Trump supposedly tried to get down there with the insurgents, I guess hoping he could get in on the violence, watch a few members of Congress get killed so he could claim a national emergency and stay in office.  It didn’t work out that way, but people were killed, hurt, and the members of Congress were terrorized.  The coup wasn’t successful, but a whole lot of people participated and took notes as to how it might be done in the future.  That is sin from beginning to end.  I bet nearly every person in the crowd as well as the instigators would call themselves “christian.”

In addition, something really harmful, therefore sinful is going on in our states, and by “Christians.”  In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis decided to ban books (against the first amendment), deny health care to women and trans kids (with no medical knowledge on DeSantis’s part, of course), dictate what students will be taught in school (with no education credentials and a whole lot of racism and homo/transphobia), and bus immigrants based on lies to Martha’s Vineyard (to prove a point or something).  Once those actions, those harms were going on in Florida, they spread like a disease to other states in the Confederacy or in Confederate wannabe states.  Texas regularly ignores our Constitution, but nothing happens and Gov. Abbott, like Gov. DeSantis, sits and grins at his success.  That’s sin, too.

In Tennessee earlier this year, 2 state representatives were kicked out because they stood with constituents when they protested that the legislature had done nothing to stop gun violence after a mass shooting in Nashville.  Fortunately, both men were reinstated by their constituents.  The harm done by that legislature and governor didn’t stop there.  On Saturday, a federal court said it was OK to deny medical care to trans kids while they were waiting for a court decision.  In addition, they demanded medical records from a Vanderbilt University Medical Center clinic that treats trans kids and other medical issues young people have.  I and many others thought medical records are entirely personal and no one could get them without the patient’s permission.  I guess not in Tennessee.  Vanderbilt turned the records over and didn’t tell any of the patients until it was done.  The whole anti-trans people action is sin!  We don’t know how those children and families will be harmed by that decision, but it is pretty much guaranteed that they will be.  I can’t believe Vanderbilt could not have protected those records from the ignorant hateful Tennessee State Attorney General.  Did he even need to have an honest reason?  I suspect it was just power of position and the anticipation of the cruelty he could inflict.

The powermongering and money-grubbing mostly centered within the Republican Party is not going to slow down on its own.  The leaders and their most ardent followers will not willingly give up the power, money, and ability to do harm to those they don’t respect.  They are addicted and are so deeply overwhelmed by the euphoria that comes from their positions or perceived positions they will use them to the fullest doing as much harm as possible as they orgasmically hunt for the next targets for their venom.    

The Republican Party has 6 of our Supreme Court justices on board with the harm and they are doing as much of it as they can get away with and they can get away with a lot while they tell states they can decide about a woman’s reproductive rights and whether colleges can diversify their student body using race as a factor, and can let businesses discriminate against LGBTQ+ persons (hey, even using a case that wasn’t even a case).  All of these have done significant harm while the 6 sit back, smile and believe they have done god’s will.  They haven’t, but they no longer care.  Power, money, and causing others’ pain are powerful drugs, and they partake frequently.

We the People will have to be the ones who ultimately decide whether or not we are going to permit the constant denigrating of our fellow Americans and trampling on our Constitution.  We are up against a formidable opponent because they have been planning and practicing this bad behavior for decades while We the People just lived and tried to do better.  

To start, we must find ways to get every citizen registered to vote, then to the polls or to vote through absentee ballots or mail-ins.  We can’t let this to chance because the Republican harm machine is moving forward at a rapid pace.  They have nothing real to offer anyone outside their leadership circle but pain and more pain.  Our Department of Justice needs to start acting on behalf of We the People as states pass laws that are clearly against our Constitution, particularly the first and 14th amendments (our basic rights) as well as the 15th, 19th, and 26th voting amendments.  Maybe getting some of the planners of Jan. 6th indicted would help a bit too.  There is no time to sit back and just watch.  We must do what we can right where we are, then expand outward, tapping into the expertise of those who have been working to stop the harm/sin for a long time.  We can do this!

SOME CHALLENGES ON INDEPENDENCE DAY

By Ruth A. Sheets

On Thursday, June 29, 2023, the 6 conservatives on our Supreme Court decided they wanted a trip backward into Jim Crow Land, and called “Affirmative Action” unconstitutional.  Affirmative Action related to colleges and universities means letting institutions use race as one of the factors in considering an applicant for admission.  Of course the 6 conservatives on the Court made up the reasoning for their decision to end affirmative action (except in our military academies).  They used the 14^th Amendment as the justification, (equal rights and all that).  As students of our Constitution, they should know that the 14^th Amendment was written to protect and advance the newly freed Black population, not the over-represented white population.  Due in part to the Supreme Court’s rulings in the past half century or so, often related to voter suppression, women’s right to abortion, and allowing pollution in areas where Black and other non-white people are concentrated, Black Americans have not come close to reaching anything like the equity Brown v. Board of Education was supposed to usher into our society.  Justice is not for all and our Supreme Court conservatives have decided it is OK for them to permit, to even support racial discrimination, while they make up excuses to “justify” it.  They certainly do have that excuse thing down.

It is Independence week and I believe it is essential that We the People consider some practices that would not fit in with the dreams our founders had for this nation, even if those founders didn’t realize those things were part of their vision.  I am particularly interested in looking at a few in particular.

-          1. Moves in many states are being made to eliminate most curricula and books related to people of color, particularly Black Americans (as well as LGBTQ+ Americans). Florida is the centerpiece of this one, but other states, mostly in the Confederacy, are jumping on board.  The states pushing for this discrimination claim those curricula and books make white kids uncomfortable.  What!!!  little white kids feel uncomfortable?  What about the way white kids, their parents, and grandparents did everything they could to keep little Black, Latinx, and other non-white kids from even attending schools with white children, and when the courts said they must attend, those white folks, including many of the children, made life a living hell for those unwanted classmates.  Is it possible white kids would be more uncomfortable than that?  Some white parents don’t even want their precious little darlings to read about those times.  Our current Supremes haven’t had a chance to rule on the book-bannings, but they will and I suspect we all know how they will rule and who will be able to continue their unconstitutional behavior. 

2. The SC fearful 6 just said that it is OK to discriminate against LGBTQ+ persons if you have a business, even if that business isn’t real, and if the supposed “clients” are not actually clients, aren’t LGBTQ+, or don’t even know the “plaintiff.”  Yep, decide how you want to discriminate, then accept a non-case so you can rule against the LGBTQ+ community on behalf of some nebulous religious claim.  Not too democratic, I’d say.

 3. The SC conservatives went after two significant universities:  North Carolina and Harvard, and told them one of their most effective programs for diversifying their student body is no longer available.  Can you guess which one?  Of course you can; it’s affirmative action.  Their reasoning as mentioned above is warped, but just what one should expect from this is pathetic Supreme Court with 6 conservatives, none of whom could be considered fair or willing to stand for equity or even equality in 21^st Century America.  Legacy acceptances are OK, though because those kids are mostly rich and white, the constituency of the magic 6. 

4. The “Freedom Caucus” in the House of Representatives is made up of members who have shown no evidence of wanting freedom or any of the other supposed American values for anyone but themselves and possibly their donors, if they can even think that far.  That “caucus” and the Supreme 6 seem to be in sync nearly all the time.  Republicans have decided that naming things exactly opposite of what they really are (“Freedom Caucus”) works very well to help in the brainwashing of the Republican electorate.  They’re not wrong.  

5. Voter suppression is increasing including:  gerrymandering; limiting voting places in areas where “Democrats” live; calling fraud every time a Republican candidate doesn’t win (it started with Trump, but now is widely practiced since there were no down sides to Trump’s lying claims, at least not yet; shortening early voting; stopping vote by mail when Republicans learned their constituents were not using it as much as Democrats; the SC gutting one of the most popular laws of the 1960s, the Voting Rights Act, in 2013, the part that required the former Confederacy to report any changes related to voting they planned to make.  NOTE:  One can know this was about voter suppression because even before the decision came down in 2013, Confederate states already had anti-voting laws ready to go into effect:  voter I.D., difficulty in registering, shutting down voting locations in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, changing election rules and who could enforce them, and more.

6. Two weeks ago, the SC got a lot of kudos for a decision they should never have had to make at all.  In the case Moore v. Harper, they said that the idea of independent state legislatures was unconstitutional.  Of course it was unconstitutional, a bit of nonsense made up out of whole cloth by Republican operatives who wanted to keep red states as red as possible by letting their legislatures decide how the vote would be counted, which votes would count, and that only the electors they chose, not the voters, would be sent to the electoral college.  The case should never have even entered any court state or federal, but, Republicans do get many privileges they should not and abuse and expand upon them as often as possible when there are no negative consequences attached.

7. This morning, I read a report on millennials and Gen Z-ers and that they do not consider themselves patriotic.  I don’t know if there was a specific definition for “patriotic” given to respondents, but only 38% said they considered themselves patriotic while older respondents had higher percentages.  This Independence Day, we need to take this finding seriously.  What is the disconnect?  How is it our young people don’t trust our government?  This is not a new phenomenon.  Back in the 1960s we were told not to trust anyone over 30, that is until we turned 30.  We saw that point of view presented on TV, in articles, and in movies.  

Younger Americans are highly tied to social media and online sources which are filled with misinformation, half-truths, political nonsense, and influencers who can pop online whatever strikes their fancy.  That in itself is not a negative because it has opened the world for the online presenters as well as the viewers.  The viewers, unlike the presenters, often don’t know what is real and what is fiction, (an act). 

There is a lot of politics online that is hard to miss.  If a particular YouTuber, for example, spouts a mouthful of anti-democratic nonsense, it might have greater weight than the truth spoken by someone the viewer does not know.  There have been a few regulations on social media and other platforms, but nothing permanent.  The platforms’ owners have decided to permit whatever their personal biases call for and whatever they are paid by sponsors or investors to allow.  I suspect our SC will see a case of some sort related to social media, but until that happens, we are at the mercy of people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, neither of whom are particularly democratic or free of extreme bias and they will use both to promote and manipulate their social media entities.  It is likely our SC will go along with the Zuckerberts and Musks no matter what is best for this nation. 

So, what can we, at least somewhat patriotic Americans do? 

1. First, we must get our legislators to vote to expand the Supreme Court.  It has been done before, and it’s time.  We have a whole lot more people and cases to be heard than 150 years ago.

• 2. Congress needs to set up a strong code of ethics for ALL federal courts, containing actual consequences for breaking the code, including removal from office with ways to remove judges without requiring impeachment.  The founders did not know how many states we would have, so thought getting 2/3 of the senators to see that a bad justice needs to be struck from the bench would be reasonable, not nearly impossible as it is now with our extreme political Senate.
• 3. We need a crusade to get our senators to see that the Supreme Court is not functioning with the best interests of the American people in mind and in their decisions.  We need to publicly and often report on their bad behavior and even bring charges in court.  A justice tried and removed from office might get the others to straighten up.  
• 4. We need term limits for the justices to 18 years tops, then move justices to lower courts.  That way each president will not be able to have too much influence.
• 5. There should be a set of standards below which no SC justice nominee can go:  at least 5 years on a lower court; no nominee who has a significant bias against the rights of Americans in their decisions prior to the nomination; approval by legal organizations on both sides of the aisle.  That would be a start.
• 6.  Precedents cannot be overturned unless the decision is unanimous or with only one descent.
• 7. Book banning is against the first amendment and no state or community should be able to institute it.

If we are to keep our democracy alive and well in years to come, we are going to have to focus more on our Supreme Court (as well as the lower courts), and start making better selections of whom we want to hear the cases that impact the lives of We, The American People.  As things stand , we will not have a strong democracy  if we let this current court continue its biased decision-making that is against the rights of so many of us and overturning 50 year and longer precedents for no reason other than their own personal biases.  The excuses they use as defense are pathetic and poorly reasoned, but who cares when there is a super majority of justices who are only for rich white pseudo-christian, “straight” men and corporations.  That leaves out the vast majority of the American people.  That will not work in a democracy, but We the People don’t have to let things continue as they are going.   

Happy Independence Day!

CELEBRATING FREEDOM THIS SUMMER

By Ruth A. Sheets

Believe it or not, 2023 is nearly half over.  Wasn’t it just yesterday we were celebrating the new year 2023?  Summer ushers in a time of year different from any other in our culture.  School is over and kids have time to play, think, read, and do a lot of other things without school requirements  shaping their days.  There is summer school, but it is and should be very different from programs during the year.  Families consider vacations and what they will do if they can afford to take one together.  Even if it’s only an illusion, summer means “freedom” to many.

It is totally appropriate that we get to formally celebrate freedom twice as a nation in the summer, Juneteenth and Independence Day.  Technically, Juneteenth is a day or two before the solstice, but for most of us, it’s summer.  On June 19^th, we celebrate when the last of the enslaved people in Texas in the defeated Confederacy were informed that they were free (as they should have been for about 2-and-a-half years since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.  From that point, no one in the South could say they didn’t know that slavery was over.  OK, many white southerners “pretended” they didn’t know, but that’s another, very important  tale.

Two weeks after Juneteenth, we celebrate Independence Day where We the People (as our Constitution names us) celebrate America’s freedom.  That was the day the Declaration of Independence was formally signed by John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress and the Secretary, Charles Thompson, on behalf of the Congress itself.  The members of Congress would have the opportunity to sign the document a month later, but that was not a requirement, it was the members personally committing themselves to the goal of independence for “The United States.” 

The Declaration would have been a minor footnote of history had people of all 13 states not stepped up, along with foreign supporters, to drive the British armed forces from those states.  The fight lasted until 1783, more than 7 years after the Declaration was signed, and many people died to attain that goal.  That is a lot of commitment.

The founding legislators were all white men, but far more than just white men worked to gain American independence.  Women of many backgrounds contributed significantly as did Black Americans, and members of several indigenous communities.  The French and others from foreign lands helped out too.  In short, it was truly a group effort. 

Eleven years later when a group of men from all the states sat together in Philadelphia to try to hammer out a constitution to govern what was even at that time, a very mixed group that called itself America, they began the document with “We the People.”  They did not write “We the rich, white, Christian, straight, male People.”  Some may have been thinking that, but the truth is, they didn’t say it which means “We the People” does include more than that one particular group and over the years, our Constitution has expanded to be more inclusive.  For our nation to be truly great, the full diversity of America needs to participate in all aspects of American life, including governing. 

There are many right now who want to make the United States a “Christian” nation, Christianity being favored over all other groups.  That was definitely not what the founders wanted.  Some of the founders were Christian, John Adams, for example, but even he did not want this country to establish Christianity in any of its forms as the religion of America.  

Several of the founders, like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin  were Deists who believed in God, not a particular religious understanding of God.  Others, like George Washington considered one’s faith to be personal and not to be imposed by anyone on anyone else.  If the founders, those sacred men whom contemporary conservatives claim to revere didn’t want an established religion, what makes today’s “Christian nationalists” so determined to make it happen? 

White supremacists right now promote fear, fear of “white people being ‘replaced’” in this country.  They are, of course, vague as to what that means, but they hang it out here so white Christians, in particular will forget what Jesus taught about loving our neighbor, and will silence, even do harm to those who don’t look like themselves.  They don’t want people who don’t live as they do to participate in this society either.  Crimes against the LGBTQ community, for example, have increased significantly each year since 2020 when some politicians began targeting members of that community as though they are worthy of being harmed.  A large percentage of the people standing against women’s bodily autonomy and the rights of other groups are white “Christian” men, to many, the privileged class.  Our current Supreme Court conservatives act as though there is a privilege for white, straight, Christian men and their corporations, and seem to be trying to make our Constitution agree with them.

This Independence Day, we need to re-commit ourselves as a nation to the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all Americans, not just a certain set of Americans.  We also must remember that the writers of the Constitution wanted us to work to “form a more perfect union.”  We don’t have to shift our thinking very much to work for those things.  There are have always been people leading the way if we would pay attention.  At the time of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution there were people who already stood for equality and knew that slavery was not only wrong, but harmful to this nation, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, and probably every Black person in this country enslaved or free among them.  It’s too bad a lot of Americans were not listening.  Are we paying attention now?

I argue along with many others, that diversity and democracy are what made this nation strong from the time of our Revolution to the present, even though we got off track when it came to people of color and women.  We have the tools to do better in shaping our union, again, if we choose to. 

We have 2 chances to formally celebrate diversity and democracy this summer:  Juneteenth and Independence Day.  So, let’s go all out and celebrate FREEDOM!  We have an opportunity to concentrate on the many things We the People have in common.  But in addition, we must appreciate the contributions We the People make in all our diversity to this nation.  Our marvelous diversity can take us all into a brighter future, that is, if we stop allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by the forces that would rather divide us than unite us.  Make these Juneteenth and Independence Day celebrations joyous and vehicles for uniting We the American people.  

EMPATHY, CAN IT WORK?

By Ruth A. Sheets

I have heard Trump supporters, even the American people referred to as “stupid or ignorant, and other even less flattering names.  I have been thinking a lot about this lately and have come to understand they/we are neither stupid nor ignorant.  Overworked, over-stimulated, over-committed, overwhelmed, underestimated, undervalued, under paid, under-informed would be more accurate. 

Our media, particularly social media, run, of course by mostly rich white men who have an agenda of their own generally involving power, accumulation, manipulation, and abuse are partly at fault.  They need eyes and buyers for the products being sold on the media.  They don’t care about the pain this inflicts on the consumers of that media, as long as those eyes lead to passing on the stuff put online that draws more eyes and more investor money.

The media also get help in their corralling of susceptible viewers/voters from employers who consistently underpay and under-appreciate workers, and state governments that deliberately keep those folks needy.  People who are needy can develop frustration, resentment, anger, even deeper negative emotions because life is so difficult and everyone they see on the various media seem to be doing better than they are.  I think of it as the “Leave It To Beaver” syndrome, named after the 1950s-1960s show where everyone lived in perfect little houses in perfect white neighborhoods with only a few rascals like minor bully Eddie to deal with.  That was the life every white family was supposed to live in America, right?  What happened when one’s life didn’t work out that way:  more than 2 kids, a job that didn’t allow one to afford that perfect little house, mean kids in the neighborhood, teachers too exhausted to spend sufficient time working with each child (some of whom had a disability or other learning difference), had only one parent, both parents needed to work to make ends meet?  You get the idea. 

The very rich who are orchestrating the division in our country are doing just fine.  They have had every advantage and believe they “did it all by themselves, no help, no need of direction or limitation.  They have milked nearly everything they can get from the poor and working-class people over time.  They have often done it so subtly their victims have not noticed, and they have been permitted to accomplish this nearly with impunity.  They have used their money and influence to buy candidates and legislators as well as judges and justices willing to impose the right-wing will.  They sponsor pay-day lenders, cut federal assistance programs, poorly finance work training programs which are often required for financial assistance, underfund schools, institute regressive sales taxes, allow rent and price-gouging, and on and on, none of which negatively impact the rich, of course. 

It seems to me when a group of mostly white people (who believe they should be, but don’t want to admit they are privileged in every way) has been misused and misdirected so badly, one can expect trouble.  When those same white folks are being informed by their legislators and media they are about to be replaced by those people whom they think want a chunk of that privilege, it is a problem.  If they tie that belief in “replacement theory,” to the massive changes that are overtaking them:  global warming, inflation, inability to keep up with the Jones’s, and their many other challenges, I am amazed that more of them are not trying to grasp in desperation at things which are untrue, harmful, and even self-defeating. 

Putting down the Trumpers and Trumpettes may seem a good idea to some, but right now, those folks are struggling and feel that Donald Trump, child-man that he is, is all they have.  They like the rah rah, the insults, and deliberately ignore the blatant lies.  They have been shaped over time to believe that men who are the loudest and most insulting must be strong, real men, a lie of course, but who has time to reason that out when being hit with so many lies through the media they consume).  Even if they do recognize the lies, they can't afford to acknowledge them.  Their hero, their savior, can’t be a liar, a criminal, can he? 

Division/Polarization is largely the work of right-wing leaders, right now, Republicans.  They even say the thing out loud as Marjorie Taylor Greene did when she said we should have a civil war.  She has no clue what that would be  but expects if there were violence, she would be above it all or victorious in the thick of the fight with her little gun.  I guess she thinks all the guns in white hands will  give her and her rich buddies a win (whatever that means in their minds. 

I do worry about polarization, but what worries me more, as I have come to see it, is that so much of this division is carefully planned and serves the very rich, mostly white, mostly male folks who are extremely desperate for power.  They are willing to bring down everything, believing they have the right, and what it takes to create something new that will put them permanently at the top of something (whatever we end up with, of course).  We have permitted those rich ruling wannabees to encroach on our rights, our lives, and our peace of mind.  That, to me is the greatest conspiracy going on right now, and there is pretty good evidence it is real. 

Some evidence of this “conspiracy” might include:  the behavior of our social media owners in permitting bad behavior online as long as it is by the right-wing and Republicans (OK, no one should own a media entity, even if they start one); the purchase of our legislators at all levels by the very rich; The Supreme Court Right-wing supermajority working to break our Constitution in favor of rich white men and corporations. 

In addition, just check out the kinds of laws being passed in “red” states around this country.  They are not laws to improve anyone's lives, not even rich guy lives.  They are meant to hurt, divide, diminish, and infuriate.  If they can keep all of us hating each other, those richers can move in and claim (whine) they know how to fix things (yes, the things they broke – but they can’t even if they wanted to, and they don’t want to).  Their goal is primarily accumulation of power and money (prestige wouldn’t be turned down either).  They want to break even more, ala Trump, DeSantis, McCarthy, and the “Freedom Caucus” (anti-Americanists all).

For the corps of anti-Americanists, who claim to be so patriotic, fascism is looking great right now.  They even hold their meetings in Hungary where President Orbán is working to create his own fascist state, building on his own BS with which he has been covering the Hungarian people. 

This group of fascists in training on both sides of the Atlantic, is quite clever.  Here, they have been able to get people to think it a good idea to split our United States apart, possibly into several individual nations.  I guess the most powerful will each try to take one of the newly divided segments to rule.  They won’t couch it in terms of a steal, but wealth makes people think they should get whatever they want.  Some will fight those who oppose them, or rather, they will con others into fighting for them.  There is not a lot of courage evident right now among the “out” disrupters.

Empathy has been defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.  I consider it a critical virtue.  We are hearing that we can’t really empathize with those who are too different from ourselves and we are also being told which people those are.  White Christians are being targeted most intensely with this right-wing message: “You are superior to every other race or group; it is god’s will that you rule; you can hurt people in those other groups before they hurt you, and they will hurt you,” etc.  Empathy is impossible!   

We are all being pushed to ditch positive virtues in favor of the non-virtues like hatred, distrust, anger, fear, dismissal, bullying, vilifying, and more rather than caring, love, appreciation, understanding, hope, and the rest.  We don't have to go along with it, and we certainly don't have to participate in it.  We truly can do better but it will take a lot of work, and even more courage and determination.  Inclusion is hard, but when it works it is amazing and everyone can win.  We need to make it work here for the sake of our nation and our world.

Please understand I am not letting those who are stirring up the fascist soup and force-feeding it to a lot of vulnerable people off the hook.  They have a lot to answer for and have not been held accountable for anything they have done lately.  Rarely do they get put out of office, no matter how badly they behave and go against their oath of office and our Constitution.  Right now, though, I want to focus on the people who are suffering from their latching onto appalling leadership that does not deserve their loyalty.

I know this is counter-intuitive, but it seems to me an important way to address this very real challenge is to keep doing things to help make life better for those people under the Trump spell:  make sure their roads are usable, they have clean water, affordable electricity and broadband, their children can attend good clean, well-staffed schools, their local newspapers still operate to bring them honest news of local events and people, employers pay a living wage, they have a hospital closer than 100 miles from their home, and they can afford life's basics.  Then it must be made clear over and over in case they miss it the first, second, and third times, who it is that has helped get those things for them, nearly always Democrats.  It is worth a try for reaching disaffected people who are vulnerable to the messages of division and polarization.  what has been going on clearly has not worked, and we all know what it is to keep doing the same things over and over expecting a different outcome.  (insanity)

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM’S LIES

By Ruth A. Sheets

This Sunday is Pentecost, the “end” of the holiest part of the Christian calendar.  The “season” began back in February with Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, passed through Easter in April, then closes 50 days after Easter.  This year, as a United Church of Christ minister, I have been thinking a lot about Christianity during this special period.  More and more conservative Christian groups are claiming that the problems this nation is facing are due to people not living rightly.  For those people, Christian Nationalists, “rightly” means doing things the way “we conservative Christians” say they should.  Why?  My question to them, why should what you think is “right” impact me and the rest of the people in America who may not agree with your notion of “right?” 

Last week I read a book I found enlightening as well as disturbing, and quite relevant to my ponderings.  The book is one every American should read if they can.  It is The Founding Myth, Why Christian Nationalism is Unamerican by Andrew L. Seidel & Susan Jacoby.  The book’s premise, too many “religious” Americans believe this nation was founded on Christian principles when there is far more evidenced that this is not true.  Evangelical Christians (mostly white) and many Roman Catholics hold extreme conservative beliefs, particularly related to “the 10 Commandments,” sex and gender, and forcing people who don’t share their beliefs to follow them anyway.  That is simply put, unamerican, unconstitutional, undemocratic, but alas, when one is convinced of their own righteousness, everything is on the table and everyone is in their sights.

The authors bring up a point I have known since my college days, there are several (4 at least) versions of the Ten Commandments and it is a bit arbitrary which ones they decided to pick.  When did the “Ten Commandments” hit the political scene?  It happened during the 1950s And the “Red Scare,” not at our founding as the religious right would have us believe.    A paranoid legislator with too much power, Joseph McCarthy saw Communists around every corner, under every chair and bed and would even hold up blank folders claiming he had lists of Communists in our government.  To prove, I guess, that our leaders weren’t among those Communists, a whole lot of unamerican actions were taken.  “In God We Trust” was printed on our money, the words “under God” were added to the “Pledge of Allegiance,” and an opening arose for presidents to say “God bless America” at the end of speeches.  By the way for years, “god” was not in the oath of office either. 

There were some Christians among the founders, but they represented a lot of different perspectives.  Even John Adams who was pretty religious did not want any religion either established or given privilege in the nation.  George Washington rarely attended church services, seldom mentioned God in any of his writings or public addresses.  Jefferson and Franklin were at best Deists and neither considered Christianity any kind of influence in developing the Constitution (which does not mention a higher being) and begins with We the People of the United States.   

So what is going on here?  It seems to me that conservative Christians, mostly white people, are using their religion to front for their racism, misogyny, homo/transphobia, and xenophobia.  They often get very angry when someone points out that something they have said or done is racist, sexist, or the rest.  They jump into religion so they can claim, “god is against what those ‘woke’ people stand for.”  They are rarely asked what they mean by “woke.”  Interviewers don’t ask them to explain their words or actions, “if it is not racist, sexist, homo/transphobic, what is it?”  It is as though those white conservative Christians are so holy they can’t be challenged even though they are working hard to eliminate rights that are guaranteed to all Americans through our Constitution.

I think of those “worshippers” as “pseudo-Christians.  They pick from the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures those passages they are comfortable with to try to force on others and ignore such  sayings as “love your enemies and do good to those who hurt you.”  Or rather, they distort them to mean, “we should do whatever it takes to stop them because that is really what god wants.  They are really enemies of god, you know.”  In other words, they know better than their god what “He” wants (always “He” because women are just an afterthought.  They ignore the verses in Genesis that say that man and women were created equal.  So, men are supposed to be the masters of the world and women must go along with whatever nonsense, whatever violence, whatever ignorance men decide.  Male supremacy, if even thought of at all may have been the belief of the founders, but they didn’t put that into the Constitution.  At the time “men” was considered to mean “men and women,” linguistically.   

One major problem we have is the extreme deference to religion our conservative national leaders have.  The words “god, faith, and “religious freedom” are tossed about regularly.  In this case, “god” is their god and “faith” is their faith.  “Religious freedom” means freedom for them to discriminate, to dismiss, to hurt anyone they claim their religion demands they exclude and harm.  Our Supreme Court, you know, the supposed highest court in the land has too many members who think their religious beliefs supersede the rights of the American people.  No one who is in business should be able to refuse service to customers unless those people are committing a real crime against them, not just being LGBTQ or Black, or an immigrant, or whatever excuse they come up with.  The SC is OK with such discrimination if someone just says, “My faith says I shouldn’t do it.”  One’s faith should be irrelevant.  If your faith is so exclusive, you should not be in business, but that uber-religious conservative court has decided that it’s OK to discriminate as long as you blame it on god.  Hey, if a plaintiff’s god supposedly doesn’t like abortion, no problem, we’ll let the scared, misogynistic, white mostly male legislators in the pseudo-Christian states put women’s lives and ability to decide for themselves at risk “for god, of course.”

One’s religion should never be a weapon, although it often has been used that way.  If one looks beneath the religious shield the folks wielding religion are holding, there is always a real reason.  It usually is power or fear of losing power, revenge (that’s a big one), economics (enslave people to do the work you don’t want to pay people to do for you while claiming it’s god’s will).  Those leaders always carry with them a high opinion of themselves, their abilities, and their value.  They surround themselves with people (mostly sycophantic men and a few women, who will do whatever is commanded for the crumbs of religious reminders that doing it will win them a place in heaven, the ability to do harm to others in god’s name, or some other such potent bribery.  This phenomenon is not restricted to Christianity.  Other religions and political entities like Fascists, Communists, and emperors whose religion is themselves actively participate too.

These forced religious and pseudo-religious practices should never be part of a democracy, but fear is opening more and more democracies around the world to them.  In India, the current Prime Minister wants a Hindu-nationalism where Hindus can do pretty much whatever they want to Muslims and other religious and non-religious groups within the society, even allowing barbaric anti-women and marriage outside the faith laws to be passed and brutally employed to enforce male and religious supremacy.  Hungary is well on its way to creating a pseudo-religious nation where only white Hungarians with certain religious beliefs are welcome and will be treated as citizens.  China and Russia have already made their versions of Communism straightjacket the people into doing only what the men at the top say they should, even to the point of arresting comedians who say things the thin-skinned leaders don’t like. 

We the People of the United States should be able to do better.  We can stop bending over backward to accommodate the religious right whose purpose is to bring this nation to its knees so they can enforce their own brand of Christianity on a people that does not want it and know it is unconstitutional.  The question is, how can we get Americans to care enough to stand up for real religious freedom, that is freedom to worship as one pleases as long as it does not interfere with anyone else’s life without their uncoerced permission.  It is also the freedom to not have a religion or believe in god, any god.  That is what our founders actually wanted.  It’s time we live that and not the myth of our being a Christian nation.  We aren’t and were never that. 

MOTHERS!! GOTTA LOVE ‘EM

By Ruth A. Sheets

Mother’s Day is coming up and a lot of commercial attention is focused on mothers.  All sorts of gifts are proposed as tokens we sons, daughters, offspring of mothers can present to our mothers in appreciation for their role in our lives.  And, mothers dutifully tell us “Ah you didn’t have to do that.”  Maybe we didn’t have to, but we want to.  

Gifts plus words of gratitude are well-deserved for mothers having given birth to us or having chosen to bring us into their family.  Mothers often have the primary responsibility for the children:  preparing food, doing laundry, seeing that they are at school every day, helping with homework, remembering birthdays and holidays, keeping children as neat and clean as the children will permit, disinfecting scraped knees, keeping track of time online, at least occasional cleaning of kids’ rooms, attending parent-teacher conferences, and more.  That’s practically a full-time job and often on top of a paid job.

Every mom approaches the challenges of parenthood with their own style, worldview, and moral principles.  Some highly value education, so try to instill that value in the children.  Some mothers are animal people, so want their children to have a pet to care for (often ending up caring for the  pet herself).  Some mothers are helicopter parents who monitor every single thing their children do and stand up for them even on the job.  Other mothers believe in independence and encourage their children to take some risks and learn about the world with only a little motherly interference.  Some mothers are crafty and make all kinds of things for their children while others find crafts and handwork tedious and prefer to purchase or scrounge whatever their children need.  Some mothers are patient beyond comprehension, while others yell a lot to get things done.  In short, mothers are as diverse as human beings can be.  Mothers want success for their children and that success is interpreted in many different ways. 

Mothers are and have been everywhere in the world, but their role has seldom been described prior to modern times.  I suspect that absence in a lot of the historical records is because what women did was so basic and was done all the time, it was rarely noticed.  Or maybe, since most of the recorders of history were men, they had no idea what mothers or any other women did, particularly when men were not at home.  

It was easy for men to not see women’s work as in any way significant because men saw women as bodies that through male action, produced babies and hands that did work men needed done.  Common images of the female life cycle included the maiden, the mother, and the crone.  The maiden was a pure girl just awaiting her turn to be a mother (the true role of womankind).  The crone, the post-child-bearing woman, supposedly mourned the loss of her ability to bear more children, but had some wisdom to impart, that is if she were not accused of witchcraft or some other crime. 

I believe motherhood is one of the greatest roles any human being can have.  And, that anyone of child-bearing age has the right to decide whether or not to be a mother.  We can do that now in ways women couldn’t in the past without risk.  We understand how babies are made and how to stop making one if a potential mother is not prepared.  No child should be carrying and giving birth to a child, anywhere.  If a woman chooses motherhood, the whole society should be supporting her in that choice and throughout her offspring’s childhood.

I am grateful I live in an age when I could choose not to be a mother.  For a variety of reasons motherhood would not have worked for me or any child I would have had.  I was lucky I did not get hit with the peer pressure to produce a baby or a mother pleading for grandchildren.  Other women (and girls) have not been so lucky.

It is possible to identify which cultures value mothers and women in general.  In those societies, women hold positions in nearly every place in society.  Accommodations are made, through law, for pregnant women and mothers.  Men in general are not terrified that women will “take over” and render them impotent.  Ours is not one of those societies.

In America, We the People have permitted old mostly white men to determine who will be a mother, or rather, who must be a mother.  Not many corporations and businesses of any size accommodate mothers with child care, maternal and paternal leave, sick leave, or anything else.  Men and a few of their female surrogates are working to stop access to birth control too.  There is no logical reason, so one must understand it as being about power, male power over females (and everyone else who is not white and male.  Why are we permitting this?

I think it has a lot to do with a greater awareness of what mothers do and can accomplish.  That seems to scare men.  Mothers often seamlessly move from task to task, seeing that the children are up, have breakfast, are off to school or even dropped off by Mom on her way to work.  She makes sure they are supervised if her job hours are longer than school hours, comes home, prepares dinner, watches over evening activities like homework, TV and/or online time, and bedtime, sometimes with Dad’s help, but often not.   On days off from her “real” job, she shops, cleans the house, does laundry (OK, sometimes she does that at night after the kids are asleep unless she needs to take it to the laundromat).  Mom is expected to attend parent-teacher conferences, take the kids to the library, sports events, dance or music classes, make sure they are getting all the services they are entitled to related to their health and education, and so on, while also being an outstanding employee. 

This is not a plug for women to do more, to be super-women.  It is a reason we need to do some serious honoring of mothers this Mother’s Day and planning for how we as a nation can support mothers more effectively. 

Each mom has her special skills that touch and enhance the lives of her family.  One thing all mothers have in common is their love for their children.  Sometimes poverty, war, massive stress, addiction, and other factors intervene, keeping mothers from being the loving parents they want to be, but love is what they intend.

Maybe that is the most important gift a mother can give her children, love.  Love can make parental mistakes less problematic.  Love can let a child who for some reason does not “fit in,” have a safe place to be, a safe person to lean on.  Mother-love can support a child through tough times:  sickness, fear, loss of a friend or family member. 

This Mother’s Day, we each should take some time to think about the mother who raised us, the kind of person she is or was, and what we learned from her about life and how to live it well, with integrity.  She had flaws, of course, but she taught us things that made life possible.  What we did or do with that  learning is up to us.  God bless our mothers.  Happy Mother’s Day!

WHAT’S UP WITH REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS THESE DAYS?

By Ruth A. Sheets

Nearly every couple of days in the past few months, maybe way longer, news comes of another law being passed in a red state legislature and quickly signed by its governor that can and should be described as mean, even cruel.  I can’t help but wonder what is going on that red legislatures have become instruments of social warfare wielded by state governors with the state’s citizens the targets.

A lot of that social warfare has been going on in Florida where Gov. Ron DeSantis just has to nudge the state conservative legislators and it will be law, whatever DeSantis wants for his own personal vengeance, fear and hatred of the other, and some as yet, unidentified reasons.     These are not laws that are needed, as DeSantis claims.  They are laws of personal and political grievance.  The mostly white men among Florida’s conservative legislators don’t seem to have a problem with advancing the DeSantis fearmongering and hatred.

One would expect in a vulnerable state like Florida, the legislature’s attention would be on planning to cope with global warming, improving health care for the people of Florida, considering needed modifications to farming and fruit industries, preparing for the huge seaweed mat heading toward the coast, countering flooding challenges, or ending Florida’s food insecurity, the real problems facing the people of Florida.  Why would any legislature neglect the real problems to serve their governor’s whims?  That’s the question! 

I have been pondering for several years, since Trump was “elected” president, that any semblance of concern for the American people on the part of the Republican party seems to have drifted into oblivion.  It appears cleaving oneself to Donald Trump as leader requires sacrificing one’s moral compass, caring little or nothing for the people one is supposed to be serving, and finding ways to use cruelty to achieve questionable goals, goals which are rarely if ever stated, but must be present since so many Republicans have latched onto them.

The current targets of Republican legislatures, women of child-bearing age, the LGBTQ community and transgender youth in particular, Black citizens, asylum-seekers, public schools, and minority voters do not deserve this Republican vitriol.  I do wonder how Republican legislators get away with it and keep getting elected.  Here are a few potentials I am currently contemplating.

1. Voting suppression has been underway in the former Confederacy and Confederate wannabee states for a long time.  There is still a lot of resentment concerning the 1865 loss.  There is some kind of romance tied to the “Southern cause” that feeds a whole lot of ugly attitudes and behaviors.  Gotta still blame certain groups for the loss.

2. The current business world is obsessed with fascism, controlling other people,  making employees accept whatever pay bosses say is what workers deserve, and the unwillingness to pay their fair share of taxes.  This led to huge wealth in the hands of a few and many of them finance conservative white Republican legislators at all levels, as long as they do what the rich white guys want.

3. Evidence has shown that children are vulnerable to  indoctrination.  Republicans see that as an avenue for gaining power when they know the things they stand for are unpopular.  Go after the schools, public schools, of course, and dictate what is taught there under pain of dismissal, even arrest.  Few real teachers want to teach only what Republicans want taught if they have a choice. 

4. Book banning is a selling point for Republicans because one does not even have to have read the books they want to ban.  It just has to have a suggestive title, cover art, or author of color.  

5. Conservatives are obsessed with sex in all its forms.  Can’t teach sex and no discussions of menstruation for girls, I guess because ignorance for girls is bliss.  Getting teens pregnant works well for Republicans too.  Hey, in 13 years or so, those forced birth children can fill the factories of the legislators’ donors.

6. Evangelical and Roman Catholic Christianity in the United States has taken a turn toward support of fascism (which they call religion), claiming god tells them that people who don’t look like them, experience the world like them, and believe what they do are to be suppressed.  There is a history for them to follow.  1920s and 1930s Italy and Germany come quickly to mind.

7. Perhaps, when a political party chooses to follow a leader who has no moral compass, its leaders will see as acceptable, even valuable;  grabbing women’s bodies without consent; openly voicing racism and misogyny and expecting people to see it as normal; being uninformed and lying as often as possible, even tens of thousands of times, knowing they will rarely be challenged on the lies; inciting, supporting, or participating in an insurrection and 28 months later still not charged for it; stealing secret documents if you can get away with it, lying about having them, then claiming to have the right to them, expecting no charges.   It seems political bad behavior is the way to go to get power and attention and to avoid accountability, and Republicans are practicing every day. 

8. Red states have been heavily gerrymandered and the Supreme Court has said “OK, as long as it is political.”  (Gerrymandering is always political SC conservatives!)  So, the state legislatures have Republican supermajorities because the state’s people have been groomed to vote only “R” despite the fact those super majorities have done little to nothing to help them and have no intention of changing.

9. Hurting people works for a lot of folks as long as the targets are not themselves and their friends and families.  Since many white people in the red states have only white straight friends (or it seems that way), passing “bathroom” bills that force people to use the bathrooms of their birth gender, keeping trans girls from playing girls’ sports, denying care for transgender kids and youth, making drag shows illegal, keeping trans adults from getting care, taking over cities whose populations are mostly Black, make sense to them.  What happens when those targeted groups find ways to make the pain less, figure out how to get around Republican bullying?  Will Republican legislators move to inflict greater pain?  Will they trump up more crimes they can charge members of those “hated” groups with?  Richard Nixon and his team did it through their “war on drugs” aimed  at “Hippies and Black Americans” (part of his “Southern strategy”).

10. Hate, fear, anger, and resentment are powerful emotions that get adrenalin going.  Maybe people who have schooled themselves to feel very little can get high on those negative emotions.  To be truly effective, they need to be directed toward someone the person can convince himself/herself deserves their hatred.  Following up the hit of adrenalin, they can move to passing bills that will in some way hurt that target.  I suspect a broad smile lights up their faces as they enter their votes to inflict what the Republican legislators see as righteous pain.

11. Republican legislators, at least some of them know what they are doing is wrong, or at least they have a tiny twinge in the back of their mind that it is unamerican, unconstitutional, but they do it anyway.  When one of their target groups dares to challenge them, they will make the person(s) pay.  We saw that in Tennessee when the Assembly voted to expel 2 Black representatives for standing with protesters at the Assembly’s inaction related to gun violence after 6 gun deaths at a school not far from the state Capitol.  The Black legislators were reinstated by their cities.  Then, Montana did the same when the transgender representative dared to tell them their bad actions would cause harm to trans youth among whom there is already a high suicide rate.  She was silenced and is now suing because the action of the legislature is unconstitutional, first amendment, that free speech thing.

12. Our Federal government Republicans are also behaving badly, holding our economy hostage so they can seriously cut programs that serve disadvantaged people:  elderly, poor, disabled, American veterans.  That is shameful, but they are on a roll and will do as much damage as they can before the people stop them.  I just hope it isn’t so much damage that it cannot be repaired.   

This legislative violence started out with the goal of doing harm to the groups they planned to target.  Some groups were added later, like trans kids, but the writing, as they say was on the wall.  Each law has ancestors which took away bits of citizens’ rights.  Legislatures required Black drug users greater sentences than white ones using the same drugs; they put all kinds of conditions on abortion, who could get one, how long they would have to wait, the kind of invasive procedures would have to be done to the woman first, what kind of facility could house abortion providers, parental consent, etc.  Despite the Constitution giving every citizen the right to vote at age 18 and up, states began chipping away at those voting rights:  need I.D.s the Republican legislators would approve, voting locations limited in districts that are heavily minority or Democratic, permitting only specific people to use mail-in or absentee ballots and somehow those privileged people would have to deliver the ballots themselves, gerrymandering became very precise, surgically cutting up districts to give Republicans advantages they did not deserve, you get the idea.  

These ancestor laws have morphed into what is going on in the red states.  Texas and a couple of other states are incentivizing citizens to rat on people they think are getting or helping someone to get abortions and some state legislatures want to execute women for having abortions (sound like Russia, China, North Korea)!  They are also threatening anyone who crosses state lines to get an abortion.  (can we say “obsessed?”)  For those same red states, being transgender is a crime and parents who help their desperate children get trans care are abusers, criminals.

Colleges and universities are not allowed to make their fragile white students uncomfortable learning about diversity because, let’s see, white people want to pretend they are the only people on Earth who matter?   Everyone else is a potential servant or slave? 

I think, as I have for a long time now that conservative white people are scared, scared all the time.  They know in their “heart of hearts” they are no better than anyone else, which is why they have to keep feeding themselves with the Fox Not Nearly News lies.  They need to hang together in legislatures and pass appalling laws that will hurt those people they know are just as good as they are.  They warp Christianity to fit their equally warped world view, essentially creating god in their own image. 

All this effort by bigots like DeSantis and the other conservative white legislators and governors have one slight upside.  Democrats and independents are starting to wake up to the fascist laws that are descending on us.  People are talking to each other trying to figure out how to do an intervention to treat Republican insanity. 

Republicans no longer can be considered a worthy political party.  They lost that position when they let their racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homo/transphobia, pseudo-Christianity take over their thoughts and actions.  I can honestly say, “these are not good people, even if they themselves don’t realize it.”  I hope a lot more Americans will come to see that and vote them out of office.  We all must do whatever is necessary to get registered to vote and swear an oath to ourselves that we will vote in every election and vote for people who care about us and this nation.  That would be a start.  There are lots of people out here to help.  Call out Uncle John or Aunt Mary when they make racist, sexist or other unkind remarks and remind them that we’re all people of equal value, even them.  We can make things better.  In fact, we have to before global warming makes us all irrelevant.